Fawkes

Whenever Fawkes was severely injured, it was a terrible time. It reminded all of them just how dangerous their world was, when it could stop the most unstoppable of their company.

It also meant that Butch, Star, and Ben would have to labor over miles of terrain to find a decent patch of radiation, and then take the time to fight off any abhorrent mutations that were nesting around it. Then set up camp around this cancer-causing swamp. All this while goading a heavily injured Fawkes along before he became too weak to walk on his own.

At the moment they'd found a large, empty shipping container that had been tipped over by some explosion, dumping its precious load of nuclear barrels into a depression that, over time, had turned into an irradiated cesspool.

And Fawkes was sitting inside of it now, breathing heavily, letting the radiation sooth him like steam from a spa. Being a pure, first generation Vault Dweller, of course, Ben could only sit some distance away, listening to Fawkes' voice echoing from inside the container.

It was ludicrously like hearing someone shout from an outhouse. Ben's imagination wandered to Fawkes sitting on a barrel of radioactive waste, back bent to avoid the roof, just chattering away to himself in a loud, rumbling bellow.

As he waited for the super mutant to finish healing up on radiation and come out so they could continue on their way, he ran his hands through his hair, briefly wondering what on earth his life had come to.

"BENEDICT. MY FRIEND."

"I'm right here!" Ben shouted back, nervously glancing around, expecting at any moment to see a Yao Guai bounding through the dead trees. "Inside voice!"

"I can still see my intestines, but they are no longer falling out. I grow tired of sitting here."

"Wait until you can't see your intestines, please." Again, Ben wondered what his life had come to.

The silence was brief. There was an impatient thud of Fawkes' fist against the inside of the container. "You never told me about what happened in your Vault, when they called you back for help! It would make a good story…to pass the time!"

Ben fiddled with his Pipboy a moment, using VATS to scan their surroundings. Star and Butch were supposed to be out there making sure nothing attacked them while Fawkes was vulnerable. But you could never be sure in the Wastes. "It wasn't that interesting," he said at last. "The first time, I'd parted from everyone on fairly good terms…even the Overseer had to respect that. I walked straight into his office and persuaded him that Amata was the best chance the Vault had to survive. He was a stubborn megalomaniac, but he did want the best for the Vault in his own way, and he'd always known it since her birth…Amata was hope for the future."

"Amata." Fawkes tried the name out in his teeth, "She was your friend?"

Ben shook his head, staring out into the distance. "She was. They all were. I would have even accepted the Overseer for stepfather…" he chuckled disbelievingly, in awe of how much he would have sacrificed for Amata.

"Was? Were?" Fawkes shifted on the barrels. They creaked, a shard of metal snapping somewhere and letting more radioactive goo hiss out. "No longer?"

"I was my Dad for them," Ben replied at last, "I was the GOAT, literally and figuratively. People I'd known since before I could walk…my Uncle Stanley, he gave me this Pipboy and was always ready to listen to me complain as a kid. He'd just tinker away on the Vault's systems while I ranted about Butch and Amata and the Overseer and everything under the sun, from prepubescent troubles to the existential feeling of being trapped in the Vault."

"And then Officer Gomez…he was like my cool big brother, always stepping in to pull me and Butch apart. Always there to give me an extra helping hand or put a good word in for me with my Dad or the Overseer. Old man Taylor…who used to laugh at my antics. People who babysat me. Taught me. Held me in their arms when my father paid them house calls…"

The lights on the Pipboy flickered as the display went into sleep-mode. Ben gazed blearily at the darkened screen. "They drove me out. Banished me. 'Good riddance,' they said. 'Get lost. You're not one of us anymore.' Every single one of them spat it at my neck as I walked by on my way out the door. I'm sure some of them would have liked to kill me. My old friends. My nosey neighbors. Even Amata. Even my childhood sweetheart. They were my family, and they rejected me."

There was only silence. Fawkes may have understood completely and was trying to think of something to say…or he was still processing. Ben had no way of knowing. Because Fawkes, in his own way, was a Vault orphan as well. Except that what he had suffered was a hundred times worse than anything Butch or Ben had been through.

"But you know all about that, I guess," Ben finished. His mind flashed to the fight earlier that day…the big, ugly super mutant Master towering over Fawkes, opening up at point-blank range with a machine gun, tearing his friend's insides out before Fawkes could even lift his sledge.

Because Fawkes had been reciting poetry. Trying to remember the lines, to calm himself even as they carefully cleared out the tilted remains of a high-rise building in the D.C. area. Send a fellow-mutant's brains against the wall, recite a verse. Kick one off the parapet and hear him scream all the way down…recite a verse.

"The men of the East are decked in steel," Fawkes interrupted his thoughts. Another blasted poem. No sign of having understood Ben's story of losing his family. "They march with a trumpet's din. They glitter with silks and golden scales, and high kings boast their kin." A deep sigh. A difficult pause as Fawkes' mind struggled to grasp at the fine, tattered shreds, the echoes of a cultured age. "High kings boast their kin…while we of the West wear the hides of wolves, but our hearts are steel within."

Again, Fawkes waited, as if hoping Ben would complement him on the recitation. Ben didn't feel like it. "The Marching Song of Connacht," the super mutant supplied helpfully.

Ben wasn't familiar with the work. But a super mutant was. A mutant who had almost died today with rhyme and rhythm on his lips. "You hold back a lot, Fawkes."

The mutant master's eyes are lidless and white. No pupils. Nothing human remains in a face that is covered with veins…arteries bulging like cords under his tough green skin. He roars at the smaller mutant, spit spraying out between his bared teeth, spattering Fawkes' face. Confident in his power, blind to anything but the desire to kill, his bellowing scream almost drowns out the ear-shattering whine of the machine gun roaring to life.

"Sometimes, I can't…I can't help but feel that if you let yourself go, just a little…you might not have almost died today."

"But I know better," he quickly amended, ashamed at how little consideration he was giving Fawkes' internal struggle. "I understand why you can't. I just…worry about you."

The wind swept across the barren horizon, singing softly. When Fawkes spoke again, he was using his inside voice. "Which is better to save, the body or the mind? Which is truly connected to the spirit? If you find the question a difficult puzzle, Benedict, when body, mind, and spirit are united…how much harder it must be for me, when my body is pulling me towards a dark salvation, and my mind yearns for the light, to what I may never be again."

"If my body were to win, Benedict…if I were to join my feral brothers in their animal madness, will you do me one last favor, as a friend? Will you stage…let us call it…an intervention?"

They both knew what that meant. A VATs shot lined up, centered on the soft spot above Fawkes' ear. A bullet ready to put him out of his misery. Ben felt an awful pressure on his throat, a pain behind his eyes. The scar from his lobotomy seemed to ache like a phantom warning. He swallowed. "Fawkes…you're my anchor, more than you realize. You've always kept me on the straight and narrow and…if I begin to do terrible things, if I seek a 'dark salvation', grant me the same courtesy. Stop me, any way you can. And I will do the same for you."

"Agreed." Fawkes sounded relieved. "But maybe you and I, maybe we won't lose ourselves. Maybe we'll be too busy, looking after Vrutch."

Ben burst into laughter. Delighted, Fawkes joined in with that ugly chuckle that sounded like a Deathclaw choking on dinner bones. "But OUR GIRL will watch over him, I think." The super mutant added, grinning.

Ben nodded, smiling softly to himself. "She's very good at that."

Their mirth faded into companionable silence. Then, there was the sound of pattering footsteps and panting breath from the other side of the container. "Benedict…your CREATURE is coming into the container." There was a curious woof, this time from inside the container. Fawkes' voice increased in panic. "BEN. RADIOACTIVITY IS NOT GOOD FOR THE CREATURE."

"It's hardly any better for me!" Ben growled before whistling insistently for Dogmeat. His loyal pet willfully ignored him. Man's best friend. Sure.

He pulled out a precious plastic bottle of Rad-X and began unscrewing the lid, trying not to think of how Star would scold him for wasting supplies and braving the radiation just to haul Dogmeat out so Fawkes could finish healing up in peace.

Again, for the thousandth time, he wondered what his life had come to.